It looked and felt unmistakably like the end of an error. As Rafael Benítez
arrived on Teesside last night, his ill-advised marriage of convenience with
Chelsea was already on the rocks. By the time the team bus headed out of the
gates at the Riverside Stadium, it seemed all but over.

What came before, as an under-strength Chelsea team struggled before
eventually breaking Middlesbrough’s limited resistance in the second half,
ended up feeling like an irrelevance. It set up an FA Cup quarter-final
against Manchester United — a dubious prize — but the details of a mundane
victory were drifting into the